The Measure We Measure, 12th Monday (II), June 22, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of SS. John Fisher and Thomas More
June 22, 2020
2 Kings 17:5-8.13-15.18, Ps 60, Mt 7:1-5

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today as we ponder the 13th of the 16 part focus on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is trying to get us to live by his standards, not those of the righteous scribes and Pharisees or the virtuous pagans. This week we’ll get to his synthetic conclusions. Today he tell us, “Stop judging that you may not be judged,” promising us that “as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” He is communicating to us that our receptivity, our openness, to his grace is dependent on the way we treat others. For us to receive the love of God, in other words, we must be opened through loving our neighbor. For us to receive God’s mercy, we must be merciful. That’s why Jesus tells us not to judge others, because we cannot truly be merciful unless we stop judging our brothers and sisters.
• Jesus isn’t indicating that we shouldn’t judge between right and wrong and leave all of that judging exclusively to God. God has given us the moral law precisely so that we can make moral judgments about actions. In today’s first reading, we see how God himself judges the actions of the Israelites at the time of the Assyrian invasion. Israel in the north and Samaria in the center of the Holy Land were both run over by the Assyrians “because the children of Israel sinned against the Lord their God,” the Second Book of Kings tells us, “and because they venerated other gods.”  What they did was wrong. God saw it and wants us to see it. When we see people worshipping other gods, when we see people taking advantage of the vulnerable and innocent, when we encounter people telling baldfaced lies, when we encounter terrorists trying to kill the innocent, when we see mobs vandalizing and looting stores or tearing down statues of founding fathers, when we see police officers kneeling on innocent people’s necks, he wants us absolutely to pronounce, as he does, that such actions themselves are evil.
• But while he wants us to share his judgment on the moral quality of actions, Jesus forbids us to judge people. We must leave that to God, because while we can see externally whether their action conforms or not to what God has taught us or in conscience we know to be good or evil, we can’t judge the agents, since we can never know everything that is going on inside of them. We don’t know all the interior facts. This is true for deeds that are clearly wrong: we cannot know why a person, for example, is stealing, or even why a soldier is hammering an innocent carpenter’s legs and feet to a Cross. It’s also true for deeds that are clearly good: we cannot know if someone giving alms to the poor is doing it for vainglory, if a man defending an elderly woman being attacked has ulterior motives, if a person showing up for Eucharistic adoration is doing so to hide from responsibility, family members or even the police.
• Instead of judging our neighbor, Jesus wants us to love our neighbor and show mercy to our neighbor. To do that, he tells us, we need humbly to recognize that often the temptation to judge our neighbor comes from a desire to deflect the attention from our own thoughts, behavior and sins. He says, “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” Jesus recognizes that many times we judge our neighbor as a superior to an inferior, failing to grasp that we ourselves are sinners, too. He wants us to adopt a totally different perspective: when we see our neighbor’s errant behavior, to use it as an opportunity to examine our own, because often we’re guilty of similar behavior. Compulsive judgmentalism distorts our perception and hardens our hearts. He wants us to take out our own planks. This obviously is a call to examination of conscience, contrition, sacramental confession and conversion. Once our planks are gone, then we can start to see with the eyes of faith, the eyes of mercy, the eyes of charity.
• Jesus wants to help us to see clearly so that from there we can really love and help our brothers and sisters, especially when they need it. Once our planks our removed — once we recognize that we, too, are sinners who have needed to be forgiven by God — that we can with humility share the mercy we’ve received with others, helping them to see that their vision may be distorted, helping them to correct behavior when it is choosing darkness rather than the light. After we’ve seen our own sins and weaknesses, we’re able to help our neighbor not as an enemy seeking revenge, but as a doctor applying a cure, in many cases the same medicine we’ve needed and received from God. The Pharisees used to criticize harshly from above. Jesus wants us to measure out the measure of mercy we’ve received from God.
• Today we celebrate two great saints who measured out to others an extraordinary amount of love, even to their deaths, those who, while not judging persons, judged actions and refused to go along with what everyone else was saying because they knew certain actions were wrong. Saints John Fisher and Thomas More are great because they the eyes of their conscience were so clear-sighted and their hearts who steadfast and generous. During a time in which every other bishop in England except him behaved as false prophets taking oaths that were both schismatic and apostatic, saying that Henry was the head of the Church in England and that his adulterous second bond was a true marriage, John Fisher remained true to Christ; at a time when so many of Thomas More’s lay contemporaries and others likewise betrayed the Lord, he refused, even though it meant the loss of his property, his high position in the realm, his freedom and ultimately his life. With clear consciences, they tried to help others take out the specks and planks in their eyes so that they might see things with the light of faith, but most, including King Henry, were too willfully blind to do so. They didn’t judge individuals but they did judge actions, beginning with their own, and their judgment to be on the Lord’s side led to their being judged by God to come to his eternal right. The measure of holiness they sought to measure out was measured back to them, packed down to overflowing. We prayed at the beginning of Mass through their intercession that “we may confirm by the witness of our life the faith we profess with our lips.” That faith is what Jesus teaches us today.
• Every morning at Mass the Lord Jesus gives us, just like he gave Bishop John and Thomas, an eye check up. He purifies our vision in the truth of his word and then helps us to keep our eyes on him, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins and the sins of the world so that we may see clearly, see things as they really are, see things as he sees them, and go out to help others see, too. As we prepare to enter into holy Communion with him through the reception of his body and blood, we remember that he seeks not only to help us remove all obstacles from our vision, but to give us an eye transplant so that we see as he does, looking on the crowds with compassion, not judgment, and seeking to bring them to the unobstructed beatific vision to which he has done so much to make possible for us. Through the intercession of SS. John and Thomas, we pray for the courage to do so and to measure ourselves out as fully as the one who here says to us, “This is my body … given for you” and “my blood … poured out for you and for many.”

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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